In the News: 9th May

Our weekly round-up of stories about women’s lives and their rights around the world.

Brisbane Times | Muslims on what it’s like to live in Australia
What is it to be Muslim in Australia today? Last month, Fairfax Media published the stories of nine men and women about life here as a Muslim. It then asked readers who are Muslim to speak of their experiences and how they explain extremism and Islamophobia to their children. Dozens of people responded. A selection of their edited responses are below. Read more.

Curcle.co | Meet Zymal Umer Pakistan’s Youngest Social EntrepreneurZee Bags is an innovative project of a 9 years old girl, Zymal Umar. When Zymal was six years old, she use to travel for shopping with her parents. Her mind was more on the surroundings rather than on the array of goods displayed in front of her. She noticed how dirty the street was. The main reason behind was that the street was lined with the plastic shopping bags which clogged the gutters and blew away with the slightest breeze. This observation made her depressed. She was disheartened to see her beautiful city Sargodha in such a bad condition. She recalled a shopkeeper selling her things in a newspaper bag and an idea shaped in her mind that why not make newspaper bags and sell them to help the needy people like SOS Village as there were many orphan children over there who are deprived of many things like money, food, relationships (SOS village is an orphanage consisting of 14 houses and each house has 10 kids, each house is supervised by a mother or you can say a nanny who washes their clothes and gives them food). Her parents helped her in bringing this project into shape. Read more.

What should be a satisfying experience of intimate physical connection with another human being (or several – if you wish) all too often becomes riddled with difficulties caused by poor self-esteem, performance anxiety and basic inability to have an honest, respectful conversation with our partners.

This is a particular challenge in the South Asian community (I have Pakistani heritage). Too often we don’t talk openly for fear of ‘breaching’ family ‘honour’ through any behaviour that might be perceived as sexually expressive.” Read more.

New York Times | Sex Talk for Muslim Women
“I am not a cleric, and I am not here to argue over what religion says about sex. I am an Egyptian, Muslim woman who waited until she was 29 to have sex and has been making up for lost time. My upbringing and faith taught me that I should abstain until I married. I obeyed this until I could not find anyone I wanted to marry and grew impatient. I have come to regret that it took my younger self so long to rebel and experience something that gives me so much pleasure.” Read more.

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sister-hood is a digital magazine, providing Muslim women with a platform to speak for themselves, rather than being spoken to, spoken for, or spoken about.

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sister-hood is a digital magazine and a series of live events. We create platforms for women of Muslim heritage to speak for themselves, rather than being spoken for or spoken about.
sister-hood challenges stereotypes and promotes the fearless, progressive, creative voices of women of Muslim heritage.